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NASA — The Mascots in the Running to Fly around the Moon!

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NASA

NASA — The Mascots in the Running to Fly around the Moon!

Earlier this year, the Moon Mascot design contest challenged people of all ages from all over the world to contribute ideas for the zero gravity indicator for the Artemis II mission. This plush item serves a very important purpose — it indicates when the astronauts have reached space by floating around the spacecraft! The zero gravity indicator also reminds the astronauts of Earth when they are far from home.The Moon Mascot design contest received thousands of entries from over 50 countries — but only 25 are entering the finalist round.“Rise” | Lucas Ye from Mountain View, CaliforniaALT“Rise” has a soft round body that resembles the Moon and wears a baseball cap that represents Earth. This design is inspired by the “Earthrise” photo captured in 1968 by the Apollo 8 crew.“Zappy Zebra” | Ken...

SpaceX completes 400th Falcon booster landing on a drone ship – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

SpaceX completes 400th Falcon booster landing on a drone ship – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster completes a landing on the droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ during the Starlink 10-56 mission on Aug. 27, 2025. The recovery was the 400th landing of an orbital class rocket. Image: SpaceX A Falcon 9 rocket placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit shortly after sunrise on Wednesday and scored the 400th successful drone ship landing for SpaceX’s reusable first stage booster. The achievement came about eight and a half minutes into the Starlink 10-56 mission, which lifted off from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:10 a.m. EDT (1110 UTC). The B1095 first stage booster, making its second flight, touched down on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ (JRTI) stationed in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Carolinas. The majorit...

Climate and Society Students Address Climate Challenges in the Real World – State of the Planet

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Science

Climate and Society Students Address Climate Challenges in the Real World – State of the Planet

The summer capstone project is a chance for Columbia Climate School’s Climate and Society students to put academics into action. After a year spent studying subjects like climate mitigation, adaptation and justice, students partner with an organization—this year’s participants included the NYC Department of Health, the National Institute of Urban Affairs, Capgemini, H2Global, the Climate Imaginarium and others—to tackle critical climate challenges in the real world. This month, students had a chance to showcase their projects, which offer impactful solutions in health, the arts, policy, climate finance and urban resilience. Details on some of the projects appear below. Client: NYC Health DepartmentProject: Be a Buddy Pilot EvaluationAdvisor: Rafael RamosStudents: Yongcheng...

SpaceX successfully launches Super Heavy-Starship on critical test flight – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

SpaceX successfully launches Super Heavy-Starship on critical test flight – Spaceflight Now

A SpaceX Starship-Super Heavy rocket thunders away from Starbase, Texas to begin the Starhip Flight 10 mission on Aug. 26, 2025. Image: SpaceX Running two days late, SpaceX launched its huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket Tuesday, chalking up what appeared to be a remarkably successful test flight in the wake of three back-to-back failures earlier this year. While re-entry heating damaged a protective “skirt” around the the engine bay of the upper stage Starship, along with partially melting a control flap near its hinge, the vehicle remained under control throughout and made it all the way to a powered splashdown in the Indian Ocean as planned. “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting tenth flight test of Starship!” SpaceX said in a post on X. Earlier, ...

Poor weather forces scrub of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 – Spaceflight Now

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SpaceX

Poor weather forces scrub of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 – Spaceflight Now

Several people wander the dunes surrounding Launch Pad A at Starbase, Texas, to marvel at the fully integrated Starship rocket designed to launch Starship Flight 10. Image: Stephen Clark / Ars Technica Update Aug. 25, 8:22 p.m. EDT: An anvil cloud forced a mission scrub. SpaceX was once again unable to launch the 10th test flight of its Starship rocket from southern Texas as soon as Monday evening, but it ran into weather problems. Anvil clouds over the launch site were the culprit behind the prevented launch. They presented a lightning risk, which wasn’t able to clear in the time available to SpaceX once they started fueling. The Monday evening scrub followed a scrub on Sunday connected to an issue with its liquid oxygen system at the launch site. A new launch attempt could come as soon a...